by Jen Blood
“You’ve been here before? Since the fire, I mean.” Juarez asked.
“A couple of times—I borrowed my mother’s boat and came out.”
We were a few feet from my father’s cabin. Night had fallen, the sound of the ocean like some haunting lullaby in the distance.
“So you saw him then?” Juarez asked.
“Yeah.” I took another step toward the cabin. “He just didn’t see me.”
It had been a gray night the first time I saw my father at the cabin—not quite raining, but damp enough that it might as well have been. When I reached the cabin, my father was outside. His hair was long, his beard had grown out, and he wore jeans that hung low on his bony hips. No shirt. He knelt beside a wood fire in front of the cabin, focused on the blaze. He could have been there an hour, or he could have been there the whole two years since I’d seen him last.
I’d stood there watching from the woods, shivering, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I left my father kneeling by the fire, staring into the flames. Even at fourteen, I’d known there was no way to get back the man I remembered—the one who told me stories and tucked me in at night, kept me safe and loved and protected for nine perfect years. He might as well have died in the fire with the rest of the Paysons. That night, not for the first time, I wished neither of us had survived.
Juarez and I faced each other on the path. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, waiting for me to tell my story.
It wasn’t a story I cared to tell, though.
“You never came back here after he died?”
I shook my head wordlessly.
“And now you don’t want to go in.” His hand was still on my face. It was warm and I was cold, and his eyes had a strength to them that I hadn’t noticed before.
“I do.” I shrugged and blew out a lungful of air. “And I don’t. It doesn’t matter, though. If this is where the story leads, this is where I go.”
I headed for my father’s front door.
I don’t know what I expected from the cabin, but it definitely wasn’t what I found when we crossed the threshold.
“Wow,” Juarez said. He stood behind me, flashlight in hand.
I shined my own light over the opposite side of the room. I’d prepared myself for more of what I’d seen at the boarding house: mildew and mold, vermin and debris. We found anything but. The cabin was small, but immaculate—the windows clean, the twin bed made up neatly with what appeared to be fresh linens. A sturdy-looking homemade bookshelf stood beside the bed, a very thin layer of dust on the top.
I’d always known my father to be a fastidious housekeeper, but I somehow doubted that quality would extend twelve years beyond the grave. I thought again of the voice I’d heard on the phone earlier that day. That number might belong to someone in Washington, but that didn’t necessarily mean Dad hadn’t been back here. Had he been living here the entire time that I thought he was dead?
As I approached the bookshelf, Juarez ran his light up another wall, the beam a pale yellow wash over words grown barely legible with time.
“Do you remember that being there?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I never came inside. It could have been.”
I set my flashlight aside. Juarez kept his light trained on the wall as I knelt at the base. With a gloved hand, I polished the rough boards until I could read what my father had written.
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 6/4/94
Another verse was scrawled beside it, dated three years earlier. I turned my attention to the floor. More words were written beneath me. Jack lit a lantern by the bedside and set it in the center of the tiny cabin. A soft glow, more shadow than light, slowly brought the details into focus.
Floor to ceiling, beneath Spartan furniture and faded curtains, I found Bible verse after Bible verse. The dates were in red marker faded to a pale pink, the verses in black, with the most prominent passages written on the floor in large block letters. On hands and knees, I used my shirtsleeves to clean the floorboards.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 8/22/2000.
It was the most recent date I could find. Two weeks after that, my mother told the world that she’d found his body hanging in the greenhouse. It seemed beyond unbelievable to think she could have been lying about that all these years.
I sat on the floor. Juarez took a seat on the edge of the bed. I was cold and tired, and I couldn’t shake those words: Why hast thou forsaken me? Was that how he’d felt? Abandoned by his God, doomed to live the rest of his years alone? Or had something changed that day?
I turned my attention back to the titles lined up neatly on the bookshelf: Robinson Crusoe; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; Last of the Mohicans. They were old and a little dusty, but still in remarkably good condition—and they sure as hell had been handled less than twelve years ago. There was one title that I didn’t find there, though. I searched all three shelves, then stood and checked the nightstand on the other side of the bed. There was a circle free of dust where the lantern Juarez was using had been, and a small, plastic travel alarm clock stopped at 11:20.
“His Bible isn’t here,” I said.
“Could he have taken it with him, before he…?”
He left the question uncompleted, though I knew what he was asking. “Kat never mentioned finding anything with the body. I think she would have told me. It was a nice Bible—illustrated. Antique.”
My heart was beating faster, a clear blue certainty settling in place of the loss I’d lived with for years.
“He’s still alive,” I said.
I waited for Juarez to argue. He didn’t. “Who was the one who discovered his body?”
“My mother. She told me she came out to check on him—she’d been doing it for years. She’d bring supplies, medicine, whatever he needed.”
“And you didn’t see him at the burial?”
“She had him cremated before I could see the body. She said he’d been…” I swallowed. “She told me it had been a couple of weeks before she found him. With the high temps that summer, the body was pretty far gone.”
“So, it may have been difficult to positively identify the body she found,” he said.
“No. She would have known if it wasn’t him.”
“Why would she lie?”
I didn’t know. But I was damned well going to find out—just as soon as I figured out what Noel Hammond knew that I didn’t.
I left the cabin with Juarez on my heels. There was no moon, no stars, the night fully fallen and a darkness so complete that I felt newly blind, opening my eyes as wide as possible in a vain quest for light. I pulled out my cell phone. We were almost back to the dock before I got a signal.
My call to Hammond went straight to voicemail, yet again. I’d been angry before, but that began to ebb as worry took its place. I called Diggs instead.
“Everything okay?” he asked immediately.
“Have you seen Hammond anywhere?”
“Nope. Has he given you the slip again?”
“Yeah. Listen, can you find out whether his boat’s back at the landing yet, and give me a call back?”
“Done. Give me a couple minutes.”
Juarez had been silent since we’d left the cabin, guiding the way with his flashlight while he kept his thoughts to himself. After I hung up, he cleared his throat awkwardly.
“This woman—Rebecca Westlake, the one with the rosary. You think she had something to do with all this?”
With all the discoveries surrounding my father, I’d almost forgotten about Rebecca. I glanced behind me to get a glimpse of Juarez’s face. Something about his voice bothered me. He was trying to be casual, I knew, but underneath it was a near-desperation that I recognized –I’d heard it in my own voice more than once over the past few months, as I probed deeper into the Payson mystery.
/> “I don’t know,” I told him. “I don’t know anything about her—I’d never even heard of her until today.” I turned around to look at him fully. “She was Matt’s friend, though. Have you heard of her? Has he ever mentioned the name?”
He hesitated. “He’s talked about a Becca before. Becca and Joe.”
“For someone who’s just a third party in all this, here to look after a man who isn’t even a blood relative, you’ve taken a lot of interest in this story.”
“I’m a cop; it’s a mystery. And a damned good one. And I’ll admit that the fact that it has something to do with why Matt—a man who was there for me more than anyone else in my life—is circling the drain right now, has a lot to do with it.”
He took a step closer, his hand falling once more to my face. His knuckles brushed lightly across my bruised cheek.
“I’d like you to get the answers you’re looking for, too,” he said.
“Why?”
This time, I could see his eyes as they shifted from mine. “I don’t know. I just…It seems like you deserve them. And maybe I know what it’s like, not really understanding what you came from. Trying to sort through everyone else’s stories to find the truth.”
His hand slid to the back of my neck. I held onto the lapels of his jacket, our eyes locked now. He moved closer.
And my cell phone rang.
Neither of us moved.
“That’ll be Diggs,” I said.
“Good timing.”
I managed a nervous laugh. “Probably so, actually.” I stepped away and caught my breath as I pulled the phone from my pocket.
“His boat’s back, but he’s not answering his phone,” Diggs said when I answered.
“Not even for you?”
“I know, right?” Diggs asked. “I can understand him not wanting to talk to you, but who the hell avoids my calls?”
“You don’t happen to know whether—”
“Truck’s in the driveway, kitchen light is on.”
A boulder settled at the bottom of my stomach. “Did someone knock on the door?”
“No, I just had a neighbor do a drive-by. Why?” His voice got serious. “You think something’s wrong?”
I started down the old steps to the dock with the phone still at my ear. “Get your friend from the sheriff’s department on the phone. I’ll meet you at Hammond’s as soon as we hit the mainland.”
◊◊◊◊◊
We’d only been on the water a few minutes, trying to navigate through the fog over rough seas, when my cell rang again. I let Juarez take the helm. Diggs’ number was on the caller ID. Everything slowed. When I picked up, it took a few seconds of silence before he said anything.
“Diggs?” I finally prompted.
“You were right,” he said. I felt tears start, mingling with cold sea spray and heavy fog and the ocean beneath. Diggs’ voice sounded strange. People were shouting in the distance.
“Where are you?”
“I’m here—at Noel’s house. About thirty seconds after I hung up with you, a call came into the fire station.”
“You think he’s inside?” I could barely hear him between the noise on my end and the chaos on his. I wiped my tears away before they could fall, and ordered myself to get a grip.
“They don’t know yet. But…I think so. Don’t you? He would have gotten in touch with someone by now otherwise.”
“Will you still be there when I get to the mainland?”
“Yeah. Fire crews are still getting here—it’s a hell of a blaze. I’ll be here a while.”
I hung up. I stood beside Juarez, both of us at the wheel as he guided the boat home.
“They killed him,” I said. I didn’t even know who ‘they’ was, but I knew I was right.
Juarez put his arm around me and pulled me close. We rode the rest of the way back in silence.
Chapter Twenty
We watched Hammond’s house burn from the water. A blur of orange flames smudged into the fog, the colors muted like the pastels I used to use as a kid. I stopped off at Diggs’ place on the way and stashed the scrapbooks I’d stolen from Noel. My father was alive, and someone had murdered Noel Hammond; it was clear that those two facts were intricately related, and I was sure that Hammond’s notes would reveal plenty about both of them.
When the scrapbooks were secure and Einstein was happily oblivious at my heels once more, Juarez drove us to Hammond’s place. The sirens could be heard all over town. Whole sections of Littlehope had been cordoned off, cars lined up to the end of the little lane where Hammond lived. I was shivering, my stomach tight, my mind muddy. We parked at the end of the road, behind a long line of pickups carrying locals who had already arrived on the scene—either to help or, more likely, just to soak in the excitement of an otherwise dull Saturday night.
The red lights from the fire trucks illuminated the trees in waves of color. A trooper’s car was parked vertically across the road to halt traffic; Sheriff Finnegan stood beside it talking to a cluster of neighbors, some still in bathrobes and slippers.
He spotted Juarez and me and gave me a kind smile. “Diggs is waiting for you. Go on through.”
The house was engulfed in flames by the time we got there. The weight of the smoke, the strobe effect from the sirens, the knowledge of what had happened…All of it was surreal. I couldn’t make sense of anything.
“We need to find Diggs,” I finally said aloud.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Juarez agreed.
He scanned the crowd, though I knew it was more likely that Diggs would be closer to the action. The air changed the closer we got to the blaze, thickening into waves of heat and black smoke. My eyes stung and my lungs ached. Three fire trucks stood in front of the burning house, one from Littlehope and two from neighboring towns. Hammond’s truck was in the driveway. The paint on the hood was bubbling from the high temps; my cheeks and forehead felt too hot, stretched tight across my bones.
Diggs was with the firefighters, who were posted at strategic intervals around the property. He had a fire helmet on and his camera out, doing his best to stay out of the way as the firemen focused on trying to get the flames under control. I thought of Hammond’s cats; of the few conversations we’d shared; the mystery he’d been working to solve; the books that we had both read in an effort to understand that single, life-altering event over twenty years ago.
Juarez turned to speak to me, but I ignored him. The fire was loud: breathing, creaking, the timbers of the house hissing as they burned. I continued walking toward the fire, mesmerized by the flames, until Juarez caught my hand and pulled me back. He leaned in until his lips were at my ear.
“The truck. That’s probably where he was last.”
No one was paying much attention to the vehicle, the firemen too busy trying to control the blaze, the cops trying to keep the locals at bay. Juarez was good at staying under everyone’s radar, guiding me to the truck with his hand at my back.
Just as I was reaching for the door handle, he intercepted my hand. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and opened it himself.
“Heat, remember? And a possible crime scene,” he said, once more at my ear.
I nodded, and felt like an idiot for not realizing that myself and like crap for having to realize it at all.
Hammond’s truck smelled like cigarettes, but the interior—like his home—was clean and orderly. A blue chamois shirt covered in cat hair was on the passenger’s seat, a cell phone and a bag of groceries resting on top.
“He wouldn’t just leave these in the truck,” I said.
I went around to the other side, the fire hot at the back of my neck. I opened the passenger’s side door with my jacket sleeve, the heat from the metal burning my fingers even through the fabric. The keys dangled in the ignition. Juarez frowned.
“It’s not exactly a crime Mecca here,” I said. “People leave their keys in the car all the time.”
“Not if they were city cops, they don’t.”
“So, whoever it was jumped him while he was in the truck?” I asked. I nodded toward the cell phone. “Should we…?”
Juarez looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. He picked up the phone and flipped it open, still glancing over his shoulder occasionally. Something was happening in the house—firefighters motioned frantically, shouting just before a crash inside brought the blaze to life with renewed fury. A central beam in the house collapsed in a frenzy of sparks and thunder. I stood half-in, half-out of the truck, transfixed by the sight.
There was another crash, raising with it a series of shouts from the firefighters. Diggs had put his camera away and was gesturing toward the back of the house. While someone sprinted toward an ambulance parked on the road, another man took off running for the back door.
“I think they found something,” I said. When I turned to Juarez he was looking at me strangely, Hammond’s cell phone still in hand, as though something in the scene was out of place. “What is it?”
Sheriff Finnegan spotted us and came running over, while another trooper pushed people back so an ambulance could get closer to the house. When Finnegan reached us he headed immediately for Juarez, his face flushed.
“I’m sorry, Jack—I need you to take a step back. This is a crime scene.”
Juarez apologized. He discreetly returned Hammond’s phone to its place on the seat before he stepped away from the truck.
“Have they found Hammond?” I asked Finnegan.
He managed a pained smile. “We’re not sure yet—things are too chaotic to know much of anything right now.”
I was too busy watching the paramedics to respond. They disappeared behind the house with a backboard; when they returned, there was a body covered in blankets between them. The night was bathed in reds, oranges, and blues, as though I was watching the world through a colored lens. The paramedics moved slowly. They didn’t tend to the body they carried; they barely looked at it. Juarez looked away at the same time I did, and I knew we’d both reached the same conclusion.